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Going on holidays! Conclusion: we need multi-factor travel search…

Ross Dawson, July 7, 2009 5:55 PM US PT

Just one month after the birth of our beautiful daughter Phoebe, we are going on a week’s holiday in Fiji. Both Victoria and I have busy schedules coming up, so it’s a good time to get away, rest, and enjoy being a family together.

Victoria did the bulk of the holiday searching, probably spending a few days in all, given we were comparing different destinations, pulling together resort and airline schedules, and finding many places booked in what is now peak season (particularly now most people are feeling less worried than a few months ago).

In short, current travel search is crap. One of our key requirements was a kids club for Leda who’s turning three. There is no way to find resorts that have a kids club, let alone by what ages they accept, so every possible destination has to be checked out individually.

Most people have a number of criteria in what they are looking for in a holiday, yet current travel search is very poor, particularly if you are looking at more than one possible location. I’m almost tempted to set up a service to do this better, though our companies already have enough on for this year. Certainly I think we are very early in where travel search capabilities will eventually get to. I look forward to this becoming far more efficient.

It's a holiday from blogging too! Back soon.

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.